We like to eat. We like to cook. We like to play games. Why not write a blog about it? Especially with this title, i mean come on. We couldn't waste that!
Photos and Writing by Karen & Robert Steele
Those of you who watch TableTop know that they have taken a break until January. This is unacceptable. So, to fill the void, I decided to try a game video - but first I had to practice! So I practiced making video and as a result, my battery died, and game night happened while the battery was charging. Here is my practice video, and here is my practice post with a video in it. Let's see if it works.
This recipe calls for a 6-inch cake pan. I do not have such an item, but I do have a 7-inch pie pan!
It's pretty straight-forward. Goo up some apple slices in a skillet with butter and brown sugar, then put into pan. Whip up some cake batter, pour on top of the apples, and voilá! Apple upside down cake!
Right side up? Or up side down?
The only hitch came when all the apple pieces didn't fit in the pan. In the vernacular, that pan was full-up. But that's not a problem, because the cake batter will fill in all the spaces and fit nicely, right? Right? Well...maybe not. At least we didn't have any spill-over.
Upside down? Or right side up? Things get tricky when upside down is right side up.
Maybe there were just a few too many apple slices for the ideal cake. I'm not complaining, though.
Jealous yet?
What: Apple Upside-Down Cake
Where: America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2011
Here's a pretty tasty variation on rice and beans. Brown rice, black beans, and corn concoction topped with a tomato and green onion salsa.
Dinner, deconstructed.
It does take a while, brown rice being brown rice and all. I suppose you could make it with quick brown rice, if you really wanted to - or even frozen brown rice that comes in the steamer bag you put in the microwave. The frozen brown rice is super easy and surprisingly tasty, but not nearly as cheap as plain brown rice.
Dinner, constructed.
Did you notice how healthy it was? Brown rice, beans, vegetarian (or to be more precise, vegan) or at least it would have been if I hadn't used chicken broth. I will definitely make this again, and possibly some of the variations: skillet brown rice with chickpeas and coconut milk, spanish-style skillet brown rice and chickpeas. It's going to be hard to beat the black beans, though.
What: Skillet Brown Rice and Beans Where: America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2011 Results: Pretty good. Will make again. The salsa really improves the dish.
I've never made apple strudel before, so I have no idea what the non-quick version involves. Maybe making your own dough instead of using frozen phyllo dough?
Counter-clockwise from top: raisins, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon. Mise en place!
Our filling consisted of apple, cinnamon, a little lemon juice, sugar, and golden raisins that had been plumped by microwaving them in a liquid. The liquid suggested was apple brandy, or apple whiskey, or apple cider, but you could use apple juice or probably even just water - the one tablespoon of liquid gets poured off after performing its moisturizing duties.
Raw strudel - looks promising!
Roll up filling in 5 buttered and sugared pieces of phyllo, cut some venting strips, and bake. Frozen phyllo can be fussy, and there's a whole lot left, even if you end up tearing and throwing out a bunch of sheets. Perhaps frozen puff pastry would be a good substitute. Would that make it not a strudel anymore? What part of the strudel makes it a strudel and not some generic apple-filled pastry?
The finished product, plus burned goo.
The strudel was super fantastic! A little bit of goo leaked out and started burning, so we pulled it out of the oven before the top was golden brown, but Mr. Pots and Pawns pulled out the crème brûlée torch and golden browned the top. Yes, I just verbed golden brown.
Yes, it is as delicious as it looks.
This recipe came from America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2011. Having meals that are sized for two is okay - 1) there are rarely left overs, but delicious left overs are not a bad thing, and 2) when things don't work out it's not nearly as traumatic. However, deserts for two is about the best thing ever, for obvious reasons, including the fact that they tend to be incredibly cute.
What: Quick Apple Strudel
Where: America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2011
This year for Halloween we did game night, but I decided to get a little fancy with the food.
Ooh la la!
On the left we have cupcakes. We decorated them using cupcake stencils and colored sanding sugar. However, the sugar crystals were too big and a lot of the fine detail was lost. I think we may have needed powdered sugar or something. Anyway, some cupcakes turned out better than others, and some cupcakes turned out more hilarious than others. The shapes were supposed to be a pumpkin, a witch, and a spider in a spider web. We also had candy eyes.
Ta daa! Note C'thulu in column 1, row 2, the most hilarious cupcake of all.
We also had cookies! By the time we decorated them, we were done with the colored sanding sugar, which was getting everywhere, so they were decorated exclusively with different eye patterns.
Also on the table were fresh chopped veggies, spinach artichoke bean dip, chips and crackers for bean dipping, and cheesy poofs, my name for the "natural" puffy Cheetos. The beverages are not pictured but the mulled cider was a way bigger hit than I was expecting.
Oh wait! Here's a picture of the sad, less-popular, not-mulled-cider beverages.
And spooky games were played! Gloom, Zombie Fluxx, and Smallworld. Maybe another one. That's what happens when you wait to long to write a post.
Firstly - this was supposed to be a recipe for farro risotto. That was the first problem. Farro.
It sounds good in theory. It's super healthy and purportedly tasty and toothsome with a nutty flavor. I imagine something like brown rice crossed with barley. It's also incredibly hard to find.
Target had some precooked farro in a vacuum sealed bag. I passed this up reasoning that the starches from cooking were necessary for proper risotto. At Whole Foods, there was no bulk farro to be found, and the shelf space for farro was bare. However, a "helpful" employee told us that spelt was pretty much the same thing and would work just fine in a risotto. So we go spelt.
Here's just some of ingredients used. That's spelt over there. Weren't there cherry tomatoes?
Another thing you should know: this was a Test Kitchen recipe. Those guys really know their stuff, and their recipes always turn out well if you follow the recipe. ALWAYS FOLLOW THE RECIPE. Once you deviate from the recipe, all bets are off.
I'm a good enough cook that I'm usually confident about changing a (non baking) recipe around if it suits me, but this time I was working with two unknowns: 1) grains I am completely unfamiliar with and 2) risotto, which I have eaten before but never made. Red alert! Danger! We have gone from trying to solve a two-body problem to trying to solve a three-body problem.
Here are the cherry tomatoes! They were busy getting quartered. But not drawn.
The first clue I had that all was not well happened while cooking the grain. I was supposed to "simmer and stir often until all the liquid was absorbed or evaporated, about 20 to 25 minutes." I have a hard time with reducing liquids as it is - I get impatient. I almost never let a sauce reduce as much as it needs to in order to get properly saucy. However, after 40 minutes of simmering and frequent stirring, I simply poured off the excess and continued on my way.
The results weren't terrible. The flavor was quite good. You see, after cooking the grains, I stirred in cherry tomatoes, baby arugula, lemon zest, lemon juice, butter, and parmesan. Tasty stuff. However, the grain was quite chewy and not at all risotto-esque. And when I say the grain was quite chewy, I don't mean in a bad way, just in an out-of-place way. I think spelt would work well as a salad topping, for example.
See? Not bad looking, just not risotto...
Here's how I'd fix this recipe. Forget fancy new healthy grains. Forget risotto. All that tasty stuff that got added to the grains? Add it to brown rice or maybe just noodes. Yummy, easy, and solves the problem of waiting for liquid to disappear.
On the plus side, I discovered another reason to love Cooking for Two. When a new and experimental recipe doesn't turn out as expected, there's less food to be disappointed by!
What: Farro Spelt Risotto Source: America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2011
Results: Veto. *Maybe* try again someday with real farro.
My process for writing posts is as follows:
1) Try to remember to take pictures of cooking things or playing games
2) Do other things. This step can take days, or weeks!)
3) Decide to write a post
4) Import photos from camera. Look at photos and say "oh yeah, that happened!"
5) Write post
This week has been super full of the "other things" mentioned in step 2. It was so full, that no menu was made, no groceries shopped for, no new fun recipes were made. There was an emergency game night, but no pictures were taken. Fortunately, there are pictures from over a week ago in the camera.
Soup! Cheese! Avocado! What's not to love?
This is another slow cooker recipe from America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution. I've made it before, but this time was special. The cooking time is only 4 to 6 hours, which means it's not great for starting in the morning and coming home to after an 8 hour day at the office (or school). The solution? Mr. PotsAndPawns started it while I was out. I came home to magic soup! (Magic because I didn't have to cook it.) Hooray, soup!
All dressed up! See how I put a chip in it? Very fancy...
This soup made plenty of left overs, but it was so tasty that we didn't try to freeze any. We just ate it all over the next couple of days.
What: Chicken Tortilla Soup
Results: Tasty, and spicy! Watch out for those chipotles in adobo sauce!
Source: America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution
Number of Players: 4
Games: Munchkin, Dominion Seaside
Warming up with Munchkin
In Seaside, we played the recommended set called Shipwrecks. By this point, we'd seen most of the cards before, but there was one new one: Sea Hag. The Sea Hag causes every player to draw a curse card, except the person who played the card. In general, it seems that most people I play with are reluctant to use attack cards early in the game, including me. It's just good tactics to not get everyone pissed off at you too early in the game - or so I thought! There was one black-hearted rogue at the table who bought several Sea Hags, and used them until all the curse cards were distributed. Surely, we thought, his lack of beneficial cards and money would destroy him in the end. But we were wrong. Very, very wrong. He was the winner.
The black-hearted rogue and his Sea Hag
The really embarrassing thing is that I ended up with a negative score. How is that even possible?
Have you noticed that lots of grocery stores only carry apple cider in October? Or at least, they only display it in areas that are easy to see in October. I have noticed, because my brain says "Look! Apple cider! You should make Chicken with Apple Cider Sauce!"
The ingredients! No, I think the lemon juice looks fine. It must be your monitor.
I came across this recipe years ago living in my first house with cable (and the Food Network!) We had cable because my roommate got it. I guess that How to Boil Water was on at a convenient time, because they made this recipe and they made it look super easy. So I tried it, and it was awesome. In fact, I made a whole dinner with roasted asparagus and rice pilaf.
Look! I remembered to take pictures while cooking! I'm pretty fancy.
I just checked on the internet and the show is still running! Wikipedia says it's been going since 1993. Crazy! Here's the link: Chicken with Apple Cider Sauce.
Ta-daa!
Notes: Even though you use cider to make the sauce, it's not particularly apple-y or cider-y. You will feel silly for buying a huge thing of apple cider and only using half a cup.
Secrets: Pan sauces make you look (and feel) super fancy, but they are really super easy.
Proto-apple dumplings
Still reading? We had apple dumplings for desert. These were pretty easy, too. This recipe came from America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2009. You basically bake apples in a pastry dough, then cover with a cider syrup. I made one major departure: the recipe called for puff pastry, but they were sold out at the store. What they did have was single sheet crescent roll dough, so I used that instead. It worked great!
Apple Dumpling with cider syrup
What 1: Chicken with Apple Cider Sauce Notes 1: Pretty good. Let sauce cook down more, use less butter
Black beans, or bleans, are one of the tastiest beans out there. While I am sure there are many fantastic vegetarian black bean soups out there, this is not one of them. This is a very porky black bean soup. Apologies to vegetarians and pork-averse readers.
Black beans! From the Wikimedia Commons
One of the things a slow cooker does very well is to cook weird pieces of meat and make them tender and delicious. What makes a piece of meat weird? Well, here are some things that are not weird: boneless skinless chicken breast, ground beef, ribeye, and boneless skinless chicken thigh. Things that are weird: anything with skin still on it, anything with the bone still in it, and anything that I don't immediately know I can find at Super Target. Chicken parts: weird. Whole chicken: super weird. Smoked ham hock: what?
Super weird Japanese thing. Watch all the mameshiba videos on you tube!
This specialized ingredient was not at my normal grocery store. This is not the first time this has happened. The first time, I was looking for something called blade steak. I went to the fanciest grocery store I could think of, approached the expansive intimidating meat counter, and made my request.
"A what?"
"A blade steak"
"Um...let me go in the back and ask someone."
They never came back out. The was a learning moment for me. All the celebrity chefs say to talk to your butcher, find out what's fresh, they'll have helpful tips on how to best cook certain cuts of meat, make friends with them, take them out for drinks. Okay, maybe not the last part so much. Anyway, it was at that moment I realized there was probably very little butchering going on behind that fancy meat counter. Actually, the learning moment was spread out over the 20 minutes I was waiting for the meat attendant to come back. Now my tactic is to look at two or three places, then find a substitute.
Look, they even have Mameshiba plushies!
This time I found a smoked ham shank instead of smoked ham hock. Close enough.
Mmm...soup! Is sticking a spoon on it at all like putting a bird on it?
The soup turned out good, if a little smokier and a little meatier than when it has ham hock. Garnish with sour cream, red onion, and hot sauce.
Mameshiba coin purse! Squee!
What: Black Bean Soup
Results: Good. Smokey, meaty
Where: America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution
Dominion Seaside is an expansion of Dominion, which means you need the base cards from one of the stand alone games. Or you can get a set of just the base cards. Apparently that's a thing now. We scavenged the base cards from Intrigue.
We had two players for our maiden voyage. (Get it? Because it's nautically themed!) One of the things I like about Dominion games is the suggested sets for a well rounded game. This is super helpful when you're not familiar with the cards of a new expansion. We played the High Seas set. There were a couple of cards with interesting mechanics. The Pirate Ship was a little aggressive and allowed a player to either collect gold tokens or use the gold tokens she'd already acquired as money. The Smuggler helped us build up our decks really fast. The game changer, though, was Embargo. This card let the player put an embargo on a stack of cards, which results in a player gaining a curse card whenever the player bought a card from that stack. Put an embargo on the province cards, and all of a sudden your 8 coins buy effectively 5 victory points instead of 6. Put an embargo on the duchy cards, and the victory points drop from 3 to 2.
All set up and ready to go! Oh wait, where are the curse cards?
We only had two embargos: one on provinces, one on duchies. This was very effective to get people to stop buying duchies, but not so much with the provinces. Embargoes can stack, causing a buyer to take two, three, four, or however many curse cards are required. In a game with more people, the provinces could easily get embargoed to the point where a purchase is just not worth it anymore.
This was a really close game. We both had the same number of province cards and estate cards (after canceling out curses), but I was behind by just one duchy! Oh well, maybe next time...
The weather has taken its first chilly turn of the season, which can only mean one thing. Soup! And what's the easiest way to make soup? In the crockpot! Or slow cooker, as they say these days. So go blow your nose on a facial tissue, bandage your boo-boos with adhesive bandages, and store your food in resealable plastic bags. Actually, I think my slow cooker actually is a Crock Pot, so I'm off the hook.
This looks exactly like my *ahem* slow cooker, except for the Rival label. Found at nu-spoon.com
Tonight's recipe came from America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution. I know you're shocked that I've made another Test Kitchen recipe. I get in phases. My previous phase was Alton Brown. Before that it was Mark Bittman. The Joy of Cooking was my undergrad cookbook. Betty Crocker was my high school cookbook. Of course, there were plenty of other cookbooks mixed in there as well. Anyway, this is my Test Kitchen phase. Deal with it.
The important thing to realize about this recipe is that it's not easy, at least not by my standards. There is a lot of prep work to do, and it calls for cooking some of the stuff in a skillet before it goes in the slow cooker. Yep, you read that right. Cook it in a pan, then cook it in a slow cooker. I was *very* resistant to this idea at first. You should just be able to dump everything in and turn it on, right?
The thing about Test Kitchen is that they are very good at describing why they made the choices they made about a recipe. You can only read that browning the meat in the pan first *really* improves the flavor before you start to believe it, and before you know it, you're pulling out the skillet along with the slow cooker to try it out. *Even though* it's a whole extra dirty pan that you have to wash by hand. That's faith.
Oooh! Ahhh!
The other important thing about this recipe is that it is delicious. I have no idea if it freezes well, but I do know it makes good left overs. The 6 to 8 servings it makes always disappear within a few days.
What: Farmhouse Chicken and Corn Chowder
Results: Delicious Source: America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution
This weekend we had a total of five people for game night, and we played Pandemic and Tsuro.
Normally, Pandemic is a four player game, but we had the expansion, On The Brink, which allows for a fifth player. Pandemic is quite possibly my most favoritest game ever. If you are not familiar with Pandemic, there is an *excellent* youtube video you should watch:
In fact, all the TableTop videos are awesome, you should watch them all, like them all, and subscribe to Geek and Sundry.
The expansion really should be called "New and More Interesting Ways to Die"
On The Brink is neat because it's kind of like three expansions in one. You can choose to play with a virulent strain, bioterrorist, or mutation. So far the only one we've tried is virulent strain, in which one of the diseases becomes virulent, meaning that each epidemic card introduces a new effect related to one color. Last night, this was the yellow fever. So there we were, with one disease left to cure, when the final epidemic of the game hit, produced multiple outbreaks, and everyone died a horrible death. Fin.
After a short break, we recovered our wits, and played Tsuro.
Roar! I'm a dragon!
In Tsuro, you are a dragon flying along a path. You build your path tile by tile, but watch out! If your path leads you to another dragon or off the board, you're out of the game. Last man standing, or last dragon afloat, wins the game. It's short, it's straightforward, and can have up to eight players. It's also a good way to mentally recover from Pandemic.
When I can, I like to come home for lunch. Unfortunately, I have only 20 minutes total to assemble and eat lunch. Usually this means I have leftovers or a grilled cheese sandwich. This time the leftovers were mini pizza leftovers, but I didn't have time to mess with the oven and the 10 minutes of cheese melting. What to do?
The solution: Make a mini-pizza sandwich and cook it in the panini press. Voila! The pizza-nini!
Looking good!
It turned out great, but it was very similar to eating a pizza pocket. Better than a pizza pocket to be sure, but certainly thematically similar.
Here's a recipe that requires no recipe. Here's the completely unnecessary recipe.
Mini Pizza!
Ingredients:
Bread of above average strength*
pizza sauce**
toppings***
1. Preheat oven to whatever**** suits you
2. Assemble mini pizzas
3. Bake in oven until heated through and cheese is all melty, if you even used cheese.
4. Let cool as long as you can stand it
5. Put it in your face.
Before baking. Left: Canadian Bacon and Pineapple. Right: mini-pepperoni
After baking. Mmmm...melty cheese....
*We used Filone rolls. I hear english muffins work too. What is a Filone roll? I don't know, but we saw them at Target in the fresh bread section and thought they looked about right.
Filone
**Pizza sauce can be anything goopy and tasty. Spaghetti sauce, alfredo, garlic butter, whatever. I used a pretty awesome no-cook pizza sauce recipe that was embedded in America's Test Kitchen's recipe for Thin-Crust Pizza. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can watch season 12 for free. The no-cook pizza sauce recipe is in there, episode 8. You can also find the recipe on their website for free, but you do have to register.
Pretty awesome no-cook pizza sauce
***Pizza toppings: usual or unusual, meaty or veggie, anything goes!
****Our oven's default is 350, so that's what we went with. However, the oven thermometer (which can also lie) said it was closer to 250. The point is, nobody knows what temperature it was really at, but it was in there for about 10 minutes.
Then, chicken nachos! No recipe here - just chopped stuff and cheese on top of chips. Also, no picture. Sorry! You know what chicken nachos look like, and if you need a reminder, go make some!
At last, Battlestar Galactica!
See that hand? That's the hand of a cylon!
No television show experience required. We had 5 players, which is the perfect number according to boardgamegeek.com.
Premise:
You and your fellow players are trying to get across space in a series of jumps. Why? Because there are evil robots called cylons trying to kill you! They are also super sneaky and have cylons that look exactly like people, and they have infiltrated your group. At least one of you is one of these super sneaky cylons and is subtly working against you. There is only one way to win: to reach your destination. There are many ways to lose. At least if you're human. Flip that if you're the cylon.
Things I like:
It's cooperative - yay teamwork!
It's sneaky - secret roles are awesome.
There is a lot of player interaction.
There are many opportunities to make "pew pew" shooting noises! Pew pew pew!
Also, it's about 3 hours long and fairly complicated - just so you know what you're getting into.
Wrap up:
The humans were doing very well for most of the game. We were ONE JUMP away from winning when the 2nd cylon revealed himself and damaged the ship beyond repair, ending the game. Cylons: 1, Humans: dead.
PS:
Astute readers will notice that this game is not in our game library. Thanks for sharing your game with us, Alan!
Lighter than what? Who knows? But I think it means the sauce is lighter than a standard tomato sauce.
Here's what it looked like in real life:
Beautiful! Except for, you know, the labels all over it. I'm not really sure who to credit for this. The watermark says "Photo by Carl Tremblay." It's definitely the official America's Test Kitchen photo. I know this because it's the same photo that's in my cookbook.
Here's what our pictures looked like:
Shadowy, blurry...oh yeah, I'm awesome. First, fix the blurry. No more phone pics. Use the tripod. Yeah, I have one of those. Second, I was going to say fix the lighting, but the "enhance" button in iPhoto mostly fixed that problem.
The recipe itself turned out to be pretty good. It's a nice veggie pasta when you're not too hungry. But! It involved browning zucchini in the pan, then transferring to a bowl whose sole purpose in this recipe is to hold the cooked zucchini, and browning more veggies in the pan. I'm against extra dirty dishes.
Here's what needs to happen:
Just skip the zucchini. Save time and dishes. Plus, the recipe only calls for half a zucchini. What are you going to do with the other half?
Double the noodles, because noodles are awesome.
Remember to add the basil.
Note: Fresh basil is awesome. The so-called "living herb" basil that comes with its own little clod of dirt is not awesome. I got some once and it was mostly dead after two days. I swear I followed the directions and watered it correctly, but alas. Someday we'll have a magic garden (magic because it will have to garden itself) and grow herbs and peppers and other delicious gardeny vegetables.
Here's the brilliant plan for the left over half zucchini, half red pepper, and half onion: Nachos!
What: Lighter Pasta with Garden Vegetable Sauce
Results: Pretty good
Where: America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2009
PS - This is similar to another veggie pasta thing I do where I cook whatever vegetables are around in a mixture of butter and olive oil and then mix it up with noodles. Yummy! The biggest difference is that this recipe adds tomato paste (and no butter), which makes it *taste* healthier, but I do *really* like the tomato paste-less version a lot.
This recipe was AMAZING. I started with high expectations (tortilla casserole, hello) and I had some doubts that it would be worth it at about the time I was trying to peel the chicken off the pan (why you stick to pan, chicken?) but in the end, WOW. Bonus - no canned soups! Or cream of X as one of my friends would call it. Maybe she stills calls it cream of X. We haven't talked about canned soups in many years.
I completely forgot to take pictures. Well, that's not entirely true. I forgot about taking pictures until I served it, at which point I looked at the pile of goopy, lumpy, mostly brown looking mush, and I knew that no picture I could take at that point would do it justice.
But, because blogs need pictures, I found some on the internet, just for you.
Welcome to Pots and Pawns, our new blog about cooking and gaming! We've been cooking at home more and wanted to keep a record of our more adventurous dinner endeavors. We have also been getting more into gaming and we are currently acquiring about one new game each month. Usually it's just the two of us, but we've been trying to get a group together for games about once a week. So, in addition to new and exciting dinners, we'll also be posting updates about our gaming experiences. Hence the title, Pots and Pawns, because we're witty like that.
